Kuwait Executes Six People Including 'Two Iranians'

Kuwaiti media reported that six men, including two Iranians, two Kuwaitis, and two Pakistanis, were executed in the country. This is the first instance of the death penalty being carried out in Kuwait in the last two years. Some of the executed had been awaiting their sentences for several years. Kuwaiti and Arab media published various reports on the gender and nationality of the executed individuals on Friday, September 6. The Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior did not respond to inquiries from international news agencies on this matter and referred them to the Office of the Attorney General of Kuwait, which also declined to comment. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported that after the sentences were approved by the relevant judicial authorities, these six individuals were executed on Thursday at the Central Prison of Kuwait. A Kuwaiti security official told the country's media that the Pakistani man died about 14 minutes after being hanged, which is unprecedented in the execution process in the country. According to the Kuwait Times, the two Iranian citizens executed on Thursday were sentenced to death for the murder of a member of the Al-Sabah family, the ruling family of Kuwait, a 70-something Kuwaiti man, and an Indonesian female servant during a robbery. This crime occurred in 2016, and the two Iranians were sentenced to death at the end of a trial in 2019. One of the notable aspects of these executions was the pardon of a woman awaiting execution just hours before her sentence was carried out. According to the Kuwait Times, this woman, who had been sentenced to death for killing her friend, was pardoned at the last moment by the victim's family and was not hanged. The victim's family accepted the blood money proposed by the condemned woman's family in the presence of police officers and a prosecutor's representative just hours before the execution and waived their right to retribution. It is estimated that dozens of male and female prisoners are currently awaiting execution in Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government has significantly reduced the number of executions in recent decades under pressure from human rights groups and the United Nations, which have called for a halt to executions and a ban on the death penalty. Previously, the last instance of the death penalty being carried out in Kuwait was the execution of seven individuals convicted of murder in November 2022, which caused a diplomatic crisis between the country and the European Union.